THE GOSPEL OF THE SWORD. 267 



he said, " I have not been sent to curse, but to be a 

 mercy to mankind." He reproached himself in the 

 Koran for having behaved unkindly to a beggar, and so 

 immortalised his own offence. He issued a text, 

 " Use no violence in religion." 



But this text, with many others, he afterwards ex- 

 punged. When he arrived at Medina he found him- 

 self at the head of a small army, and he began to 

 publish his gospel of the sword. Henceforth we may 

 admire the statesman or the general ; the prophet is 

 no more. It will hence be inferred that Mahomet was 

 hypocritical, or at least inconstant. But he was 

 constant throughout his life to the one object which 

 he had in view, the spread of his religion. At Mecca 

 it could best be spread by means of the gentle virtues ; 

 he therefore ordered his disciples to abstain from vio- 

 lence which would only do them harm. At Medina 

 he saw that the Caaba idolatry could not be destroyed 

 except by force : he therefore felt it his duty to make 

 use of force. He obeyed his conscience both at Mecca 

 and Medina ; for the conscience is merely an organ of 

 the intellect, and is altered, improved, or vitiated, 

 according to the education which it receives and the 

 incidents which act upon it. And now Mahomet's 

 glory expanded, and at the same time his virtue de- 

 clined. He broke the Truce of God : he was not 

 always true to his plighted word. As Moses forbade 

 the Israelites to marry with the Pagans, and then 

 took unto himself an Ethiopian wife, so Mahomet 

 broke his own marriage laws, commencing the career 

 of a voluptuary at fifty years of age. His Koran 

 sudras were now official manifestoes, legal regulations, 

 delivered in an extravagant and stilted style, differing 

 much from that of his fervid oracles at Mecca. But 



